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Needing a win to keep themselves in the playoff race and avert a disastrous road trip, the Oilers came up with one of their strongest efforts in a 4-0 win over the Colorado Avalanche Tuesday.

Shawn Horcoff, Sam Gagner, Magnus Paajarvi and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored for the Oilers, while Devan Dubnyk turned away 36 shots to earn his fifth career shutout, his last coming nearly a calendar year ago.

“You look at the pressure we were under after the Nashville game and how we felt about that, it was time to really look at ourselves in the mirror and figure out what kind of season this was going to be,” said Oilers head coach Ralph Krueger. “Were we going to stay in the hunt, or were we going to leave the hunt? And beginning with Devan, all the way through the team, they decided to stay in the hunt with these two wins here.”

The win gave the Oilers eight points on the nine-game road trip. The goal heading out for the club was to earn a point for each game they played.

While they failed to reach it, they did manage to keep their season from going completely off the rails.

The Oilers finished their franchise-long trip with a 3-4-2 record. They head home currently 12th in the Western Conference standings, three points back of the eighth and final playoff spot.

“Tonight was as a complete game as we’ve played, especially on the road,” said Horcoff. “What we’ve been talking about seemed to sink in a little bit. They came really hard at us to start the game, but I thought we did a pretty good job of keeping them to the outside and Dubbie made some big saves when we needed. Then we were able to respond.

“We got a lucky little break on my goal and then we did a really good job, all four lines, of picking the pace up and getting to the net.”

Horcoff opened the scoring just past the midway point of the first period on a breakaway, taking advantage of Gabriel Landeskog’s blown tire at the Avalanche blue-line and firing a shot past goaltender Semyon Varlamov, bad knuckle and all.

Gagner increased the lead later in the period, pouncing on a rebound in front after Ryan Whitney’s initial shot was stopped by Varlamov.

In the second, Paajarvi scored his fifth of the season, batting his own rebound out of midair after taking the puck to the net off the wing.

Paajarvi did well to stick around the front of the net in a situation where often players make a fly by.

“That’s something we work on every day in practice, the coaches yell at you to stop at the net every time you shoot the puck,” Paajarvi said. “That’s definitely the coaches. When it went in the air, I just wanted to follow the puck. It came on a good loop and I tried to hit it when I could and it went in. It was pretty lucky, but I’ll take it.”

In the third, the Avalanche thought they had pulled one back when Jan Hejda’s point shot found its way past Dubnyk.

However, the goal was waved off as Landeskog was judged to have been standing in the crease interfering with Dubnyk.

“That was the right call,” said Dubnyk. “It’s not much, but that’s why they’re the best referees in the world. The difference is that I got out to my spot, stopped and set and he moved back into me and didn’t let me make the save. If it goes back the other way and he’s there, I can’t move out into him and try to sell it.”

Soon after, the Oilers added a fourth, when Nugent-Hopkins took a pass from Taylor Hall in the slot and snapped it past Varlamov on the power play.

The goal was Nugent-Hopkins’s second of the season, but it was his third point in two games, having picked up a pair of assists in a 6-5 victory over the Chicago Blackhawks on Sunday.

“I thought the two plays he made in Chicago were outstanding world-class plays on the power play, which he got some energy from, you could feel it,” said Krueger. “The goal that followed showed how much has to do with confidence when you’re a scorer like he is.”

Edmonton Oilers wrap up road trip with a 4-0 win over Colorado Avalanche

Needing a win to keep themselves in a playoff race and avert a disastrous road trip, the Oilers came up with one of their strongest efforts in a 4-0 win over the Colorado Avalanche Tuesday.

Shawn Horcoff, Sam Gagner, Magnus Paajarvi and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored for the Oilers in the victory, while Devan Dubnyk turned away 36 shots to earn his fifth-career shutout. His last came nearly a calendar year ago.

The win gave the Oilers eight points on the nine game road trip. The goal heading out for the club was to earn a point for each game they played.

Going into the final two games of the trip, the Oilers had just four of a possible 14 points, with a win, an overtime loss and a shootout defeat.

Tuesday, the Oilers had the better jump out of the gate and opened the scoring through Horcoff, who went in all alone and beat Avalanche goaltender Semyon Varlamov, bad knuckle and all.